"Doomsday" Vault Flooded After Permafrost Melts Due To Climate Change

Advertisement

The
fortified Svalbard
Global Seed Vault, designed to protect the world’s seeds from disaster and
environmental devastation, has been flooded.
The culprit? Climate change.

"It
is a fail-safe seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time –
and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters," reads the
website by Crop Trust, the organization tasked with protecting global crop
diversity.

However,
the "impenetrable" fortress easily succumbed to the forces of nature,
as record heat hit the region. This led to higher-than-usual melting and heavy
rains, instead of snowfall.

Buried
deep inside a sandstone mountain in the Arctic Svalbard archipelago, meltwater
gushed into the entrance and subsequently froze. Thankfully, no seeds were
lost and the ice has since been hacked out. However, the event has raised
concern among the community tasked with protecting the seed bank, which is
supposed to be a lifeline in case of an environmental emergency.

"It
was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that
it would experience extreme weather like that. It was supposed to [operate]
without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a
day." Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government that owns the vault,
told The
Guardian.

At
the end of last year in Spitsbergen, average temperatures warmed by 7°C (11°F)
above normal. With the climate rapidly changing and the permafrost melting,
vault managers must now find a way to protect the world’s largest
collection of seeds.

This
includes waterproofing the tunnel into the mountain and digging trenches in
order to divert the meltwater. They have also installed pumps into the seed
bank in case the future repeats itself. Right now, they are doing all they can
to protect the vault.

"This
is supposed to last for eternity," said Åsmund Asdal at the Nordic Genetic
Resource Centre, which operates the seed vault, to The Guardian.

Clearly the facility suffers from failed prior planning if it can not even withstand a temperature increase. What was the point of building it if it was not protected from water, a well known natural condition? So many things could have cause a raise in temperature, atomic bomb, solar flares, meteors or yes, even climate change. Seems like those who paid for the facility were misled of its survivability.